Stories about Sana Mir

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We have entered an age where women can be leaders in every field and research shows that women are outperforming men in many professions. Organisations are encouraging the employment of female bosses because 40 years of research have proved that women are better managers.
The trends are also changing in a country like Pakistan, where more and more women are being given their rights and the liberty to choose their own profession. Yet, it seems that the field of sports still remains off-limits for many women in Pakistani families. But I believe that this mind-set won’t last long because we ...

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Dear Shahid Afridi,
One must appreciate your energy, which helps you stay in the news despite having retired from mainstream cricket a long time ago. Be it charity drives, advertisements, special appearances in entertainment shows or simply your comments to the press, you remain in the picture.
We still haven’t forgotten the flash runs you made which earned you the title ‘Boom Boom’. And recently, you created another boom with your book, Game Changer.
Now some people are criticising the political comments you made over bigwigs in the cricket world. Frankly, you may know better there; they are not my concern. ...

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Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Every time a woman does something that society has predetermined for men, she is deemed crazy. Crazy for thinking she’s good enough. Crazy for thinking she can. Crazy for thinking she has a purpose.
This Sunday, Nike released an ad titled Dream Crazier. Serena Williams narrates the ad, depicting a spectrum of bosses. And no, I will not call them boss ladies, because that term discounts the female gender. These bosses stroke through the screen, charge through fields, smash their rackets on the ground, rhythmically move through rings, scream, run, jump, cry, laugh – these are real women. ...

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Cricket is known as the gentleman’s game, and what else could it be, given all the symbols and standards that distinguish it from all other sports? The signature leather ball, the chiselled bats, the pads, and of course, the helmet with grills!
For me, sitting in my father’s lap, watching cricket matches, echoing his every applause (and occasional profanities every time a home wicket fell) was my earliest memory of the sport. Though I fell in love with the international version of the game a bit later – after a fair amount of investment in both English and Urdu ...

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In Pakistan, who is the first person that comes to a girl’s mind when she thinks about playing cricket for a living? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that it is none other than Sana Mir, who has been a source of inspiration for thousands of girls struggling to get recognition as sports women in Pakistan.
Mir recently achieved a milestone when she was ranked the number one woman cricketer in ODIs, according to the recent rankings released by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Sana Mir becomes the first from Pakistan to top the ICC bowling rankings for ...

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For this year’s World Radio Day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) picked a theme to encourage women in sports, and ran a worldwide campaign to promote sports culture in women. However, barring the issue of having a limited number of women in sports around the world, Asian women have an added dilemma to face, and that is the demand for women in sports to also look “glamorous”, so as to increase viewers’ interest in women’s sports.
There has been a demand for attractive female presenters in sports, giving looks preference over knowledge and interest in the ...

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I will admit I am not a big fan of women’s cricket. But the horror show by our girls on the same turf where their male counterparts recently made history, was a fascinatingly wretched chapter in the epic saga that is Pakistani cricket.
While ending the ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 without a single victory (with seven losses on the trot) might be shameful in anyone’s book, but being dismissed for 64 against our rivals India was a sin too huge to allow the tournament to fade away from our collective minds in a hurry.
The rest of the report card is as bad, if not worse. The women in green started off ...

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There are certain positive developments in Pakistan that I wished to extend my solidarity with as a liberal from across the Indo-Pak border. But as I set out to write this piece, we had the news of the arrest of an Indian on espionage charges in Balochistan, fanning hatred in both Pakistan and India. Apart from this, we had some sad news coming in at the global level from Brussels, Ivory Coast, and the blasts in Lahore on Easter.
However, negativity has to be fought with positivity. We, the liberals, have to move forward with our actions to defeat the agenda of those coming in our way rather ...

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Our country has seen so many lows in the past few years that good news, in any form, is hard to digest and celebrate. Having said that, we all have to admit that the last two months have been good for Pakistan.
It started off with the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act 2016, which is a massive milestone for the country in general and women in particular. Then came the news about Mumtaz Qadri’s death sentence and his ultimate hanging, which strengthened my belief that the justice system, albeit the delay, might be a little transparent after all. Sharmeen ...

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Sana Mir wants to prepare a team that is capable enough to do without her; in other words she is ready to hand over the reins to her predecessor on the heels of arguably the biggest win of her international career.
Not many male Pakistan cricketers have cared about preparing heirs to their throne in theory, even the ones who have ‘ruled the world’ have left a gaping leadership hole after leaving the game.
Sana is hence different and she has perhaps already leapt frogged most of Pakistan’s male cricket captains by achieving what all of them collectively haven’t — a ...